AFTEREFFECTS: RELICS; Most Iraqi Treasures Are Said to Be Kept Safe

A top British Museum official said yesterday that his Iraqi counterparts told him they had largely emptied display cases at the National Museum in Baghdad months before the start of the Iraq war, storing many of the museum's most precious artifacts in secure ''repositories.''

The official, John E. Curtis, curator of the Near East Collection at the British Museum, who recently visited Iraq, said Baghdad museum officials had taken the action on the orders of Iraqi government authorities. When looting started, most of the treasures apparently remaining in display halls were those too large or bulky to have been moved for protection, Mr. Curtis said.

He and Neil MacGregor, the British Museum's director, were in New York for the opening of an exhibition, ''Art of the First Cities,'' at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

In a news conference at the museum and a subsequent interview, Mr. Curtis said he believed that American authorities now knew the locations of the artifact repositories but that as a precaution against further looting were not disclosing them.

In Iraq yesterday, American and Iraqi officials appeared to support this assessment, saying they still did not know precisely what was missing from the National Museum, because they had not yet had access to sites where art objects may have been hidden, or to rooms inside the building that were among the looters' targets.

But Mr. Curtis said the officials ''certainly know'' where the hiding places are.

Both he and Mr. MacGregor said a full accounting of missing artifacts would have to await the opening of the repositories.

It was previously known that Iraqi officials placed some artifacts in the vault of the country's Central Bank for safekeeping in the event of war. But Mr. Curtis's comments indicated that safekeeping measures may have been far more extensive.

Such measures would mirror actions taken in Iraq before the Persian Gulf war in 1991, primarily as a protection against bombing of Baghdad.

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Mr. Curtis's remarks may help explain recent reports by both Iraqi officials and American authorities that losses at the National Museum are less extensive than previously feared. For instance, Col. Matthew F. Bogdanos, a Marine reservist who is investigating the looting, said recently that Baghdad museum officials had listed only 25 artifacts as definitely missing.

Mr. Curtis said it appeared that a vast majority of the looting at the National Museum had not taken place in its display halls but in its basement storage rooms, where more commonplace objects were kept.

Some 100,000 to 200,000 objects were stored in the basements, British Museum officials said. Many of them may never have been photographed or cataloged.

As a result, Mr. MacGregor said, they are precisely the types of objects that can easily slip into the black market for looted artifacts.

''Even if they have a little museum marking on the back of them,'' he said, ''that can be easily removed.''

The protracted debate in Washington over a United Nations resolution to lift sanctions against Iraq has included discussion of a measure to urge all nations to work toward the return of the stolen antiquities, American officials said today.

But it is still not clear whether the United States will seek a separate Security Council resolution on the issue, or include it in a larger one dealing with the sanctions. It also remains unclear whether it will include anything stronger than a plea for cooperation.